Internet fraud in social networks!

Sometimes, I feel insecure when using social networks specially Facebook. It has happened several times that I received a message from a friend or a shared link on my friend’s wall but has not been shared or sent by that person. I suppose a social network like Facebook is attractive bait for scammers and fraudsters, since millions of users are connected and, an exploit or vulnerability can be hastily scattered over the network.

I even received a message from one of my friends living in another country some months ago, describing his miserable situation. In the message, was written that he is on a trip and lost all his money, cell phone and everything he had; so needs immediate help by asking for money transfer to his bank account! I’d say I was influenced and  believed the story at that moment but after thinking for a while, I hesitated! If it was a true story he wouldn’t ask me, but a closer friend or a family member since I haven’t had heard anything from him for a long time.

Facebook is full of games and applications, for lots of them the source is not the Facebook portal, while using them would give permission to access our account information. Many of them are phishing and malicious programs aiming for social engineering. Various fun quizzes which are widespread can be suitable for phishing by asking users about personal identity information or taking them to fake websites.

Taking a look at a scambaiting website such as Scam-O-Rama, a story about a Facebook scam shows that even when you chat through Facebook with a friend whom you know for years, you should be skeptical whether you are talking to your friend or a scammer! It has happened that a person chat with a friend who is in trouble and asks for immediate help to send money. The conversation is usually tried to be short and depict a stressful atmosphere not to let that person think or hesitate about the situation! I noticed that lots of people do not insert their Birthday in the info page because of identity theft and some provide wrong information. Many are cautious about sharing data on social networks yet still I suppose it is easy to spy and scam through social networks as of gullible majority.

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Facebook and the paradox of time

Discussing about Facebook again, I would relate it to the paradox of time argued by Charles Handy as one of the nine paradoxes in the society. A social network like Facebook makes it possible to be connected to much more people than before in less amount of time since you have all their contacts in a place, you would know how they are doing, feeling and much more. Even you can get lots of news about them much easier; by posting a word or sentence on your friend’s wall, you wouldn’t need to call or send a long email. As a controversy, people are crying out spending all the time on Facebook, wasting energy and time and cannot do anything else! So this kind of social network preserve the time or waste it!?

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Does Facebook change concepts?

Mind-quake presented by Robert Theobald shows that meaning of a concept is variable based on the situation, period, location, culture and so on. I believe social networks are phenomena that influence on the old understandings and alter the meanings. For instance, think about the issue of ‘trust’ when you have a date! In old times, like… let’s say only five years ago, maybe if your date looked elegant, gentle and romantic you could trust him/her right away. It might sound ironic, but just imagine that your date doesn’t have a Facebook account today! Wouldn’t you hesitate for a second? Or at least think why s/he doesn’t have it?

As a broader conception, just using any kind of social network and the way people contribute to, can make them trustworthy which was out of imagination several years ago. It is interesting that the new technologies like internet has influenced on the meaning of a lot of concepts! According to the theory of mind-quake, I suppose the meaning of trust is in the process of change by emergence of social network, so it can be considered as a mind-quake since the transform is quite fast and its grounds or consequences are not clear yet.

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